Never underestimate the commercial value of mental illness.
More bullshit masquerading as inspirational quotes.
If you give up, it means you never wanted it.
I believe the person running this Tumblr is a teenager. Poor little bastard. I got suckered by that sentiment once upon a time, too.
Someone sent me to an interesting article on a book I haven’t read, The Revolt of the Masses by José Ortega y Gasset. I hesitated to write this because I haven’t read the book, but I’m actually commenting on the post itself.
“The Smartest Book About Our Digital Age Was Published in 1929. How José Ortega y Gasset’s The Revolt of the Masses helps us understand everything from YouTube to Duck Dynasty.”
Are you, like me, puzzled to learn that Popular Science magazine recently shut down comments on its website, declaring that they were bad for science? Are you amazed, like me, that Duck Dynasty is the most-watched nonfiction cable show in TV history? Are you dismayed, like me, that crappy Hollywood films about comic book heroes and defunct TV shows have taken over every movie theater? Are you depressed, like me, that symphony orchestras are declaring bankruptcy, but Justin Bieber earned $58 million last year?
Why yes, I am wondering what’s up with Duck Dynasty. I AM pissy about the constant retreads coming out of Hollywood. I AM annoyed that Justin Bieber can finance a country’s worth of symphony orchestras. (I’m not really sure about the Popular Science thing, though.)
All is well. I’m intrigued. I’m invested in this piece. I’m even slightly nodding at this:
Put simply, the masses hate experts.
It’s so true! They so do!
But there’s a little tickle in the back of my mind at the use of the word “experts.” Then come a few more phrases that make me squirm a little.
If forced to choose between the advice of the learned and the vague impressions of other people just like themselves, the masses invariably turn to the latter. [ … ] The upper elite still try to pronounce judgments and lead, but fewer and fewer of those down below pay attention.
Huh.
Ortega couldn’t have foreseen digital age culture, but he is describing it with precision. [ … ] He would understand why Yelp reviews have more influence than the considered judgments of restaurant reviewers. He would know why Amazon customer comments have more clout than critics in The New Yorker. [ … ] a friend who is affluent, educated, and a noted wine connoisseur. [who] now relies more on wine advice from websites where anyone can post their evaluations of different vintages.
And this is where the article loses me, but not because I’m in high dudgeon over the key words.
There are several practical/pragmatic variables here that the author of the piece hasn’t accounted for:
1. The masses aren’t likely to have access to the restaurants a critic would. They may not have access to the symphony. They may not have access to wine.
2.
a. The masses aren’t going to be reading reviews of restaurants they can’t afford to go to. Further, before Google, one had to know where to look for this information, and one isn’t likely to look for that information for places they can’t afford.
b. There are only so many experts for so many things that we as a culture experience or want to experience. Not every book can be reviewed, much less in the New York Times, the holy grail of book review sections. There are not enough restaurant critics or column inches to review every eatery in any given town.
3. The point of an expert review isn’t to educate or recommend or dissuade or make such things desirable/accessible to the masses. It’s to put up a wall between the “experts,” “learned people,” “elite” and the masses. It’s a bright line: This is our turf. Do not cross. Who chooses which books and restaurants and wines get the column inches? The experts, the learneds, and the elites, who have absolutely no interest in talking to the masses at all. Those column inches are jealously guarded.
“Amateur” reviews on Yelp and Amazon are plentiful and varied. Every thing that the masses are interested in have an opinion behind them that they can use to evaluate their own choices. There are no column inch limits. There are no carefully curated lists, leaving off what the masses are actually interested in.
4. Experts. Now there’s an interesting concept. Expert. One who is more learned in X thing than all the other learneds in X thing. A synonym is “consultant.”
Except the masses have seen the experts. They have listened to the experts. They keep listening to the experts, because the experts are more learned than they are—and they know it.
And then … what they see is that the experts are wrong quite a bit of the time. They are confused. “This expert is saying X, and I want to believe him, but my lying eyes are telling me something else. Which one do I believe? DAMN MY LYING EYES!”
So they go on about their business because, in the grand scheme of things, people aren’t going to change if something’s working for them, even if an expert tells them they’re wrong, even if they want to believe that the expert is right. They’d rather just live with their vague feeling of being wrong because they can’t reconcile the viewpoint of the expert with their own experience.
5. The masses will go for what’s accessible, be it product or information, and they will turn away from carefully curated lists to find what they actually want. If they don’t find what they actually want, they’ll go for a substitute. Miley Cyrus is not Britney Spears is not Madonna is not Cher. But Madonna’s a decent substitute for Cher, and Britney’s a decent substitute for Madonna, and Miley Cyrus is—
My apologies to Britney, Madonna, and Cher.
Not only are these things accessible, they are in their faces. I do not see experts in their faces, giving them a reason to find a more erudite alternative.
6. The masses can’t make what they really want to have, what their ears and eyes want, so they have always had to take what they can get, whether they like it or not.
This is why genre self-publishing has taken over NY genre publishing. People found authors who will give them what they already know they want, but were not being provided. Authors don’t make tastes and trends. People who are looking for stories that resonate make those tastes and trends. Publishing takes pride in its gatekeeping, but it has a lousy record on what people actually want.
The article goes on with this:
The same people who denounce expert opinion about movies or music will praise a skilled plumber or car mechanic.
An expert opinion about movies or music is just that: an opinion. It has no basis in skill or objective measure. Further, movies and music are not staples of life; they are spices.
A skilled plumber will come out in freezing weather to replace a hot water heater. A skilled car mechanic will keep a piece-of-shit car running so someone who can’t afford a new car can get to work to feed their families.
How is this apples-and-Volkswagen comparison being made without irony and with a straight face?
The value of blue-collar expertise is accepted without question. The same people who get angry when I make judgments about the skill level of a pianist, would never question my decision to pay more to hire a superior piano tuner.
Shocking.
This is a peculiar state of affairs …
No it’s not. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what it is to be part of the masses.
At one point in The Revolt of the Masses, he complains about a woman who told him “I can’t stand a dance to which less than 800 people have been invited.” So how would the Spanish philosopher respond to the crowd mentality that seeks out viral videos with a hundred million views?
This is not difficult to comprehend. There are more people to choose from. This is not analogous to how many people vote for a YouTube video. This is analogous to having a billion YouTube videos to choose from.
Lastly, some more vocabulary:
… the possibility for barbarism to flourish in tandem with technology; or the unbalanced specialization which favors science over the humanities; or (in his words) “the loss of prestige of legislative assemblies.”
The masses are asses. My dad used to say that when observing what made popular culture. The case can be made, yes. Mobs have regularly shown themselves to be asses.
I’m not above making judgments on the taste of the masses, although I’ve learned that it’s wise not to do it publicly.
But to say that the masses are asses because they don’t listen to the experts is missing the point: they know who the experts say they are, but they don’t trust their advice and they know that the self-proclaimed experts aren’t there to sweep them into culture and a better appreciation of the humanities.
The experts are there to keep them out.
“In the Garden of Allah” by Don Henley
It was a pretty big year for fashion
A lousy year for rock and roll
The people gave their blessing to crimes of passion
It was a dark, dark night for the collective soul
I was somewhere out on Riverside
By the El Royale Hotel
When a stranger appeared in a cloud of smoke
I thought I knew him all too wellHe said: “Now that I have your attention
I got somethin’ I wanna say
You may not wanna hear it
I’m gonna tell it to ya anyway
You know, I’ve always liked you, boy
’Cause you were not afraid of me
But things are gonna get mighty rough
Here in Gomorrah-By-The-Sea”He said: “It’s just like home
It’s so damned hot, I can’t stand it
My fine seersucker suit is all soakin’ wet”And the hills are burning
The wind is raging
And the clock strikes midnight
In the Garden of Allah“Nice car … … …
I love those Bavarians … … so meticulous
Y’know, I remember a time when things were a lot more fun around here
When good was good, and evil was evil
Before things got so … … fuzzy
Yeah, I was once a golden boy like you
I was summoned to the halls of power in the heavenly court
And I dined with the deities who looked upon me with favor
For my talents; my creativity
We sat beneath the palms in the warm afternoon
And drank the wine with Fitzgerald and Huxley
They pawned a biting phrase
From tongues hot with blood
And drained their pens of bitter ink
Vainly reaching for the bottle of empty Edens
Branded specially for the ones
Who had come with great expectations
To the perfumed halls of Allah
For their time in the sun”We were stokin’ the fires
And oilin’ up the machinery
Until the gods found out we had ideas of our ownAnd the war was coming
And the earth was shaking
And there was no more room
In the Garden of Allah“Today I made and appearance downtown
I am an expert witness, because I say I am
And I said, ‘Gentleman … and I use that word loosely … I will testify for you
I’m a gun for hire, I’m a saint, I’m a liar
Because there are no facts, there is no truth, just data to be manipulated
I can get you any result you like … what’s it worth to ya?
Because there is no wrong, there is no right
And I sleep very well at night
No shame, no solution
No remorse, no retribution
Just people selling t-shirts
Just opportunity to participate in this pathetic little circus
And winning, winning, winning”It was a pretty big year for predators
The marketplace was on a roll
And the land of opportunity
Spawned a whole new breed of men without souls
This year, notoriety got all confused with fame
And the devil is downhearted
Because there’s nothing left for him to claimHe said: “It’s just like home
It’s so low-down, I can’t stand it
I guess my work around here has all been done”
And the fruit is rotten
The serpent’s eyes shine
As he wraps around the vine
In the Garden of Allah
This popped up in my feed today:
“No,” I said, immediately and out loud.
I remember by whom, when, where, and why I was earnestly exhorted to “be soft. Be soft. Be soft.”
His name was Joe, a much-older friend/teacher. It was a Monday in November and it was dark and raining and I was 18. I was sitting in his car in the parking lot of Merrill Hall at BYU, after he had brought me home from class. I was upset that I couldn’t seem to get what I wanted (a date).
“Be soft,” he said. But I’d had soft beaten out of me long before then and I was pretty sure I’d never be able to become soft, so I silently rejected his advice as an impossibility. I didn’t know it then (nor did he), but I was angry. There’s just no dealing with anger when you don’t know that’s what it is. And why do people find women’s anger so frightening?
I understood what he was trying to tell me: Attractive women aren’t hard. They certainly aren’t cynical, sarcastic, and wary. They are not angry. If you want a date—a husband, you can’t be those things. Men don’t find those things attractive.
Be soft, he said then.
I don’t know how, I said.
Be soft, Vonnegut says today.
No, I say.
No.
If I hear/see that one more time, I’ll puke in my wastebasket.
What bullshit is this? Who came up with this? Who thought this was a good idea? Oh, Churchill? Right, him. The guy who was leading the charge in World War II before Pearl Harbor was a glimmer in our tears. He gets a pass.
You could come back at me and say:
“Changing your tactic isn’t giving up.” That’s true.
“Retreating now to fight another day isn’t giving up.” That’s true, too.
But maybe, if you are stacking up too many “nevers” to modify your “give up,” you should probably rethink your goal or at least think about it in realistic terms. Without context, platitudes and proverbs mean less than nothing.
Sometimes, giving up is simply breaking out of a jail you built for yourself.
I have a lot of fun with my imaginary friends, thinking of them as if they’re real, telling my tax deductions about mommy’s imaginary friends and laughing about what they do with Dude, talking about them to other writers who like to talk about what their imaginary friends do, too.
We talk about them as if we have no control over them, as if they’re driving the train. In a review of Stay, reviewer Julie Weight said,
When you read Jovan’s books, you just know these characters are like real people to her. She knows them like she knows her own family. Actually, she knows them better than her own family, since she knows their motives and what they’re thinking. If you get her talking about them, you’ll forget that they are just the imaginary people who live in her head. She makes them real, however and wherever she presents them. And because of that, she also agonizes over their lives – to the point where sometimes it seems like she forgets that she’s the one in charge of their lives! All of this familiarity and love for these people comes out in the writing and the story. Because she believes in them, you will start to believe in them. She writes the characters and the stories so well that you, the reader, will become wrapped up in their lives and care deeply about what is going to happen to them. [Emphasis mine.]
Here’s the thing: All that’s true. It’s really the subconscious doing the heavy lifting—we all know this. We let it do its thing and we talk to our imaginary friends and let them dictate their lives to us because we are their scribes, but …
Then they stop talking.
What do you do then?
I didn’t realize that this can get into scary territory until I was talking to another n00bish writer who speaks in the “Character X told me to do this” vernacular. It’s cute. I like knowing I’m not the only crazy person on the planet.
Then I realized … He wasn’t taking any responsibility for the words on the page, and it drew me up sharp. He didn’t know what to do when his characters/subconscious stopped. He didn’t have any confidence in the work of the conscious mind. Worse, he wasn’t sure it was even necessary to employ the conscious mind (i.e., himself) because he had himself convinced he couldn’t write without channeling the imaginary friends and taking their dictation.
My subconscious comes up with some amazing shit. Seriously amazing. Stuff my conscious mind would have had to work for decades to come up with. People are amazed when I say I don’t outline, but I don’t. At least, not in any recognizable fashion and certainly not the way I was taught in fifth grade. (I always had to write the paper first and backward engineer the outline; it was a pain.) Things tie together in ways I don’t know how it happens, and I seem to write by serendipity. It seems automatic.
But then the free-flow stops.
At some point, the writer has to take responsibility for who these people are, what they do, what they say, how the story winds out. It’s all fun and games while the subconscious is doing its thing and the writer can pretend these people are real and are simply giving dictation.
But the subconscious is notoriously unreliable and sporadic. What do you do when it takes a break and you can’t?
You start putting words down on paper.
Conscious words, words you choose and arrange, laboriously.
You take responsibility for those words.
And for all the ones you wrote when you were taking dictation, because it doesn’t matter that nobody knows how the subconscious works, what you wrote is still from you.
All you.
There are no imaginary friends.
I’m totally not paying attention to the world around me lately. Didn’t have a clue about Read an eBook Week (missed it last year), and apparently jumped the gun with my giveaway.
BUT I still have something to give you. Peculiar Pages, an imprint of B10 Mediaworx, is giving away The Fob Bible (PDF only for now, but crap, it’s 76MB of heavily illustrated awesomeness!) this week.
What is The Fob Bible,1 you ask?
Reviewer Jeffrey Needle describes2 it thusly:
Part Bible, part midrash, part send-up […]
But make no mistake, by and large, this book is a delight from beginning to end. There are smiles and smirks, but there are also deeply insightful ponderings on things previously considered too holy to study too closely.
There’s something for everyone here: poetry, prose, play-writing, and even some e-mails (it’s not clear from my reading of the Bible that the patriarchs and prophets had access to the Internet, though this would explain quite a bit…). There’s pity and pathos, humor and hubris […]
Trust me, you want this. Ain’t a speck of preachin’ going on, neither.
______________________________
1. Fob stands for “Friends of Ben.” Yeah, they knew what’d it look like when they did it. They’re perverted that way.
2. 2025-07-24 – I was in charge of the website where he posted this review and I had to nuke it because reasons. I do have the raw, unaltered database files and can produce it on demand.
I play with boys. Always have. I was the Batgirl and Princess Leia to my cohorts’ Batman, Robin, Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, etc. Apparently, I am not the only one, since the “urban fantasy” subgenre (with the blatantly hard-ass heroine) has become such a success.
Only within the last few years have I run into women with sensibilities similar to mine and with whom I feel comfortable. Also lately, I’ve found a couple of blogs with women I relate to on a more matter-of-fact level (e.g., Dear Author and Smart Bitches, Trashy Books).
But put me in the bloggernacle (a portmanteau of blog and tabernacle) and I have to start hanging out with the boys again because the women are … well, whiny. And inconsistent in their whining.
I didn’t realize this until I was reading over on Eugene’s blog about the Japanese movie, >Freeze Me, which is, in his opinion,
… the standard Death Wish revenge fantasy formula: pacifist gets shocked into action delivers violent justice to evil-doers (“a conservative is a liberal who got mugged”).
But then the film disappoints him:
Freeze Me could have hummed and purred as well. Instead it alternately shivers and sweats and clunks and gives up without a fight.
Then Eugene goes on to blame:
… Thelma & Louise which should more appropriately be titled: “The Original Dumb & Dumber.” This supposed paean to film feminism follows the exploits of two unbelievably stupid grown women who have spent their entire lives as victims of impulse and circumstance and aren’t about to let a little (almost justifiable) homicide stop them.
The good-guy cop (Harvey Keitel) finds them such a pathetic pair that he starts emoting like a father in pursuit of his two dimwitted daughters. Their exploits inspire pity at best, contempt at worst. Not once is logic ever allowed to compete with emotion, let alone overcome it. So why not just drive off a cliff?
It’s hard not to read a very obvious metaphor into the final scene: the caring man stands by helplessly while the newly “liberated” women cast themselves into oblivion. And a woman actually wrote it.
Which put me in the mind of Mormon feminist blogs. I can’t speak to feminist blogs of any other type because I don’t read those. (Except, well, I’ve stopped reading the Mormon feminist blogs, too. )
I can’t really get a handle on this feminist thing, being as I’m fairly new to the label. Some days I think I’m a feminist and some days I don’t. Most days I don’t know what a feminist is or how one defines oneself as a feminist. I mean, if it’s as simple as “equal pay for equal work” (and the definition of that is fodder for a different rant), I’m there.
This is what I have gleaned (albeit most likely incomplete) from my wanderings around Mormon feminist blogs:
Oh, amongst other things. So it looks like to me the hierarchy goes like this:
Liberal-ish politics
Mormonism
Feminism
There’s apparently room for the traditional Mormon woman role in this construct, but what I find disturbing is the willingness to completely bitch-slap a woman if her political philosophies don’t align with the label of “feminist,” especially if it hints at a more conservative bent.
So the LDS women of libertarian capitalist leanings have only one place to play in the bloggernacle: With the boys. As usual. Who are a helluva lot more enlightened than they’re given credit for—they just explain their philosophies in Belch (yes, it is an official language).
Mind you, these are just my gut impressions, but the “discussion” of feminist issues in the church has a whinier tone than I’m comfortable with. And at this point, I’m thinking I’m not so much a feminist (whatever that means) as a bitch.
Thelma and Louise or Beatrix Kiddo? I didn’t hear much whining in Kill Bill.
Does anybody actually believe this without a boatload of qualifiers?
Over at Romancing the Blog, there was a very nice article about a mystery writer’s convention comparing and contrasting how that genre’s culture stacks up against the romance genre’s culture (including ebooks, my pet topic, but I’ll pimp that later elsewhere). I found this tidbit interesting:
The motivating keynote and luncheon speeches sounded just like the ones we hear at RWA, discussing how important it is to write your story, to finish the book, to be persistent, hone your craft, and if you keep at it, eventually you will succeed.
Er, no.